Many Globonders and FOG know Ravi Srinivasan as the Outsourcing guru who sold his last company, OfficeTiger, to RR Donnelley. What is not so well-known is that Ravi and his wife Shuba Vasan, a teacher and passionate advocate for autistic children, have begun an important educational project in India. Combining their skills in building companies and in education, they are currently putting together plans for a model educational institute(s) that address the challenges we face due to the rapid increase in the number of children diagnosed with developmental disabilities, which include learning and language deficiencies as well as behavioral deficits and excesses.

GloBoston-based Globonder Susan Gross is the Executive Director of One Village At A Time, which she founded in 2002 after attending a women’s AIDS conference in Ethiopia. This organization works to help villagers develop business plans that will not only help improve the standard of living of those running the business, but also increase the community as well. The organization’s goal is to facilitate the building of these businesses by covering start-up costs. In addition, One Village sponsors schools by providing meals to the students and by giving scholarships to several high-school aged students each year (there is no free secondary education in Kenya). One Village is directly active in the community for three years and afterwards, the businesses established under the program take over.

In October 2006, the Globond senior team went to see Emmanuel Jal in a live performance in New York City. We were invited by Globonder Karim Chrobog, who created the award-winning film “War Child”, a documentary on the life of Emmanuel, a former war child from the Sudan. Emmanuel, now living in freedom has, become an international rap star. Kirstin took her son along with her to share this once-in-a-lifetime experience. After the brilliant and moving performance, he bought a CD and Emmanuel signed the cover with the words “may God Bless You and Make you a World Changer”. Kirstin was deeply moved, and Globond has adopted Emmanuel’s words as our own to highlight our individual and collective commitment to making as big and positive an impact on this planet as we can.